Download or read book The Challenge of Drug Trafficking to Democratic Governance and Human Security in West Africa written by David Edward Brown and published by Army War College Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International criminal networks mainly from Latin America and Africa -- some with links to terrorism -- are turning West Africa into a key global hub for the distribution, wholesaling, and production of illicit drugs. These groups represent an existential threat to democratic governance of already fragile states in the sub-region because they are using narco-corruption to stage coups d'état, hijack elections, and co-opt or buy political power. Besides a spike in drug-related crime, narcotics trafficking is also fraying West Africa's traditional social fabric and creating a public health crisis, with hundreds of thousands of new drug addicts. While the inflow of drug money may seem economically beneficial to West Africa in the short-term, investors will be less inclined to do business in the long-term if the sub-region is unstable. On net, drug trafficking and other illicit trade represent the most serious challenge to human security in the region since resource conflicts rocked several West African countries in the early 1990s. International aid to West Africa's "war on drugs" is only in an initial stage; progress will be have to be measured in decades or even generations, not years and also unfold in parallel with creating alternative sustainable livelihoods and addressing the longer-term challenges of human insecurity, poverty, and underdevelopment.
Download or read book Countering the Drug Trade in West Africa written by Cristina Webster and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, West Africa has played an increasing role in the global drug trade. In the early 2000s, drug traffickers searching for new routes and markets began shipping South American cocaine to Europe through West Africa. Criminal groups have now expanded their operations in the region to include heroin trafficking and methamphetamine production. While cocaine trafficked through West Africa typically reaches Europe rather than the United States, illicit activities surrounding the West African drug trade jeopardize U.S. goals in the region. The drug trade destabilizes governments and funds terrorist organizations, including Hezbollah and Al Qaeda in the Land of the Islamic Maghreb. In 2011, the State Department launched the West Africa Cooperative Security Initiative to coordinate the U.S. response to these threats. This has been a positive start, but the Caucus believes more must be done. This book provides eight recommendations on how the United States can better assist our partners in West Africa.
Download or read book Drug Trafficking in West Africa written by William R. Wallace and published by . This book was released on 2018-04-30 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West Africa has become a global hub for illegal drugs transiting from both Latin America and Asia to end users in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The type of illegal substances has expanded from cocaine and heroin to amphetamine-type stimulants. West Africa is particularly susceptible to influence by transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) due to endemic corruption, minimal border security, regional geographic location, and poor resource management. This thesis determines the impact of drug trafficking in West Africa on the national security interests of the United States. The U.S. strategy derived from the National Security Strategy, as well as the National Strategy to Combat Transnational Organized Crime. This study reports the conditions that exist and are exploited by TCOs in an effort to conduct illegal activities and undermine the security of West African countries and the national security interests of the United States. The significance of this study is that it provides further guidance and research opportunities for scholars and government officials to continue to analyze how the United States addresses the potential of a destabilized West Africa from affecting the national security interests of the United States of America. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION * Background * Primary Research Question * Secondary Research Questions * Assumptions * Definitions of Key Terms * Scope and Limitations * Delimitations * Significance of the Study * Organization of the Study * CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW * Introduction * Section 1: Current Drug Trafficking Trends in West Africa * Section 2: Current National Security Strategy Relating to Drug Trafficking and Transnational Crime * Section 3: Congressional Testimonies and Research Relating to West African Drug Trafficking * Section 4: Summary of Findings * CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY * Introduction * Section 1: Data Collection * Section 2: Credibility of Sources * Section 3: Data Analysis * Section 4: Summary and Conclusions * CHAPTER 4 ANALYSIS * Introduction * Section 1: Overview of Transnational Crime and Drug Trafficking Trends * Section 2: Drugs Being Trafficked through West Africa * Section 3: The U.S. National Interest Regarding TOC * Section 4: Summary of Analysis * CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS * Conclusion * Recommendations * BIBLIOGRAPHY
Download or read book Illicit Drug Trafficking in West Africa written by Gregory J. Broecker and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The latest World Drug Report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) paints a grim picture of worldwide drug smuggling. Cocaine bound for wealthy industrialized countries is increasingly transiting through poverty-stricken developing countries. The UNODC reports show a clear increase in cocaine and other illicit drugs transiting West Africa. These drugs originating in Latin and South America are moving via sea, land and air through West African countries north into Europe and North America. Weak governance contributes to this increasing problem, facilitating logistics routes for drug smugglers. The U.S. has multiple tools at its disposal; security assistance resources, partnering countries to coordinate with, and various international organizations to leverage, orchestrating mechanisms in countering illicit drug trafficking via air through West Africa. Introducing primary surveillance radar (PSR) to the region will illuminate non-cooperative movement and add another tool to counter illicit drug trade through West Africa. PSR will also serve to cover multiple agency policy objectives and underpin effective airspace management, enabling trade, investment and economic development.
Download or read book Transnational Organized Crime in East Asia and the Pacific written by and published by UN. This book was released on 2013 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human trafficking and smuggling of migrants: Four of the 12 illicit flows reviewed in this report involve human beings. The first two concern movement between the countries of the region, one for general labour and one for sexual exploitation. The third concerns the smuggling of migrants from the region to the rich countries of the West, and the last focuses on migrants smuggled through the region from the poor and conflicted countries of South and Southwest Asia. Drug trafficking: The production and use of opiates has a long history in the region, but the main opiate problem in the 21st century involves the more refined form of the drug: heroin. In addition, methamphetamine has been a threat in parts of East Asia for decades (in the form of yaba tablets), but crystal methamphetamine has recently grown greatly in popularity. Virtually every country in the region has some crystal methamphetamine users, and some populations consume at very high levels.Resources: Resource-related crimes include those related to both extractive industries, such as the illegal harvesting of wildlife and timber, and other crimes that have a negative impact on the environment, such as the dumping of e-waste and the trade in ozone-depleting substances. In all cases, the threat goes beyond borders, jeopardizing the global environmental heritage. These are therefore crimes of inherent international significance, though they are frequently dealt with lightly under local legislation.Counterfeit goods: The trade in counterfeit goods is often perceived as a "soft" form of crime, but can have dangerous consequences for public health and safety. Fraudulent medicines in particular pose a threat to public health, and their use can foster the growth of treatment resistant pathogens.
Download or read book Cocaine Trafficking in the Caribbean and West Africa in the Era of the Mexican Cartels written by Daurius Figueira and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2012 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with three major developments within the illicit drug trade of the Caribbean Basin that not only changed the nature of the illicit trade but has expanded the expanse of the trade as it now impacts Africa and Asia making it truly globalised. The three major developments dealt with are: the trafficking jump to West Africa by Caribbean Basin drug trafficking organisations, the rise to dominance of the Mexican cartels in the illicit trade of the Caribbean Basin and the evolution and nature of Caribbean gangland and its organic links to the illicit drug trade.
Download or read book Confronting Drug Trafficking in West Africa written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations. Subcommittee on African Affairs and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Drugs in Africa written by G. Klantschnig and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-08-07 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This cutting-edge volume is the first to address the burgeoning interest in drugs and Africa among scholars, policymakers, and the general public. It brings together an interdisciplinary group of leading academics and practitioners to explore the use, trade, production, and control of mind-altering substances on the continent
Download or read book Africa and the War on Drugs written by Neil Carrier and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2012-10-11 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nigerian drug lords in UK prisons, khat-chewing Somali pirates hijacking Western ships, crystal meth-smoking gangs controlling South Africa's streets, and narco-traffickers corrupting the state in Guinea-Bissau: these are some of the vivid images surrounding drugs in Africa which have alarmed policymakers, academics and the general public in recent years. In this revealing and original book, the authors weave these aspects into a provocative argument about Africa's role in the global trade and control of drugs. In doing so, they show how foreign-inspired policies have failed to help African drug users but have strengthened the role of corrupt and brutal law enforcement officers, who are tasked with halting the export of heroin and cocaine to European and American consumer markets. A vital book on an overlooked front of the so-called war on drugs.
Download or read book The Challenge of Drug Trafficking to Democratic Governance and Human Security in written by U S Army War College and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-09-22 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West Africa is under attack from international criminal networks that are using the subregion as a key global hub for the distribution, wholesale, and increased production of illicit drugs. Most drug trade in West Africa involves cocaine sold in Europe, although heroin is also trafficked to the United States, and the subregion is becoming an export base for amphetamines and their precursors, mainly for East Asian markets and, increasingly, the United States. The most important of these criminal networks are drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) from Latin America-primarily from Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico-partnering with West African criminals. These criminals, particularly Nigerians and Ghanaians, have been involved in the global drug trade for several decades, first with cannabis and later with heroin. The problem has worsened to the point that these networks represent an existential threat to the viability of already fragile states in West Africa as independent, rule of law based entities. As part of this new Latin America- West Africa criminal nexus, Guinea-Bissau is generally recognized as a narco-state where state-capture by traffickers has already occurred. There is also increasingly strong evidence linking terrorist organizations or state sponsors of terrorism to the West Africa drug trade, including Colombia's Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), Hezbollah (allied with elements in the Lebanese diaspora), Venezuela, and Iran. These criminal and terrorist groups are also a threat to U.S. national security, because the illicit profits earned by Latin American drug cartels operating in West Africa strengthen the same crimi nal elements that traffic drugs to North America, and the same North African and Middle Eastern terrorist groups and nations that target the United States. The link to AQIM takes on particular significance in light of this terrorist organization's recent takeover of a vast sector of ungoverned space in northern Mali, along with Touareg allies. West Africa's geographical location between Latin America and Europe made it an ideal transit zone for exploitation by powerful drug cartels and terrorist organizations-much as the Caribbean and Central America had long suffered for being placed between South America's cocaine producers and North America's cocaine users. West Africa's primary operational allure to traffickers is not actually geography, however, but rather its low standards of governance, low levels of law enforcement capacity, and high rates of corruption. Latin American traffickers recently relocated a share of their wholesale distribution from the Western Hemisphere to West Africa, with the subregion moving from being merely a short-term transit point to becoming a storage and staging area for wholesale repackaging, re-routing and sometimes (re-)sale of drugs.
Download or read book The Drug Invasion of West Africa written by Arthur Kennedy and published by Outskirts Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Drug Invasion of West Africa is historical fiction that reads and feels like the truth. It is a gripping and imaginative exploration of what happens when drugs, politics, terrorism and international law collide on the shores of West Africa. When a US President seeking re-election and a British Prime Minister looking for his place in history decide to launch a Global War on Drugs with nothing off the table--their war will change Africa forever. The war will end with a sitting West African President under arrest for drug trafficking and Africa re-examining its place in the world. In the process, the UN, the International Criminal Court and racism all come under scrutiny. This is a bold and highly entertaining exploration of drugs and their impact on Africa and the world.
Download or read book Why Has West Africa Become a Nexus for the International Traffickers written by Yahya H. Affinnih and published by Covenant Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2023-02-16 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is undoubtedly rich in different diverse sources and literature that are put together into a coherent whole instead of dispersed copious literature on the genesis of West African countries' integration into the world political economy and geopolitics of the drug trade. To the author's best knowledge, there is no similar book that has focused on the recent West Africa drug connection. The book is well-researched and documented. It fills the missing void in the discourse of West Africa drug trade arrangements. This book is one of its kind in the annals of West Africa's drug trade history. This thrust and the thesis of the book is to provide a plausible and sufficient explanation as to why West Africa has become international traffickers' transshipments and transits hubs and cocaine distribution and repackage centers for cocaine en route to Europe. This book is informative for a wide variety of readers such as students, social analysts from different social sciences disciplines, drug policy makers in West African countries, and elsewhere in the world. The book's subject matter is a global-wide problem that concerns all modern human societies worldwide. There are no human societies that are immune to the dynamics of the global drug trade industries that pose threat to human, national, and global security in its wake.
Download or read book Transnational Organized Crime in the West African Region written by and published by United Nations Publications. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Tackling Africa s First Narco State written by U. S. Army U.S. Army War College and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2014-12-16 with total page 46 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S., Europe and regional African players must tackle drug smuggling in West Africa to prevent that region from falling into chaos. Today, West Africa is a significant nexus for the illegal trafficking of oil, weapons, cigarettes, drugs and other commodities. The United States has labeled Guinea-Bissau Africa's first narco-state and it has become the epicenter of a region where Transnational Criminal Organizations are corrupting governments and societies at an alarming rate. Their nefarious efforts, and Guinea-Bissau's state failure, conflict with U.S. stated interests. Tackling corruption, neutralizing spoilers, and increasing the societies' culture of lawfulness are necessary steps to save West Africa. This will be challenging in Guinea-Bissau due to geography, culture, government structure, and a corrupted military. But with the right adjustments to resources, authorities and priorities, it can be done
Download or read book Analysis of West African Drug Trafficking written by Steven E. Bury and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illegal drug trafficking through West Africa has grown dramatically in the last decade, capturing the attention of U.S., European, and U.N. policymakers. Most countries in West Africa have struggled to adapt to the challenges drug trafficking has presented. A few countries, like Ghana, have made a more concerted and successful effort to confront the problem. This thesis seeks to test the hypothesis that variations in counternarcotics interdiction success Ghana and Guinea-Bissau can be explained by the level of state capacity and the ability to absorb international counternarcotics partnerships to deal with the problem. The findings of this study suggest the success of Ghana relative to Guinea- Bissau is explained by higher level of initial state capacity and its ability to absorb international assistance. The government of Guinea-Bissau, on the other hand, is caught in an incapacity trap that has thwarted its efforts towards narcotics interdiction. Efforts at international partnership in Ghana have a foundation of state capacity to build upon and a viable partner whereas in Guinea-Bissau assistance efforts have been relegated to correcting the utter lack of capacity in an environment of political-military instability where a viable partner in the War on Drugs has not yet emerged.
Download or read book International and Regional Responses to Drug Trafficking in West Africa written by Camino Kavanagh and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The main objective of this background paper is to develop a preliminary overview of i) the international, regional and national policy and operational responses that have been developed in response to drug trafficking in West Africa to date, and the types of drugs they target; ii) the implementation status of these initiatives; iii) the perceived impact of these responses to date, including the mechanisms that have been established to monitor and measure impact and effectiveness; and iv) the main multi- and bi-lateral partners engaged in supporting regional efforts to stem drug trafficking. The findings of the study were presented to the West Africa Commission on Drugs (WACD), as part of its fact-finding work on the impact and response to drug trafficking in West Africa. Since a separate, in-depth paper on treatment services for drug users in West Africa is currently under development, the paper focuses predominantly on responding to trafficking rather than drug use"--Publisher's description.
Download or read book The West African Latin America Drug Trafficking Epidemic written by Madi Ceesay and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West Africa, like any other region in the world, has had to swallow its fair share of modern-day political, economic and social dilemmas. One phenomenon that has had huge negative implications on the political, economic and social spheres of almost every country on the face of the earth is the production, trafficking, marketing and consumption of illicit drugs. The countries in West Africa have not been spared of the negative consequences of illicit drugs. While some countries have an illicit drug production problem, others have a consumption problem. The countries in West Africa have an illicit drug trafficking problem. The current transcontinental drug trade in hard drugs in West Africa is rising at such a high rate and has captured the attention of the world because of the magnanimity of the negative political consequences in the region. The scale of the current Latin American drug trade transmitting through West Africa has never been seen before and so are its political consequences in the region. The fact that diplomats, political figures, non-governmental organizations and almost all sectors of civil society and security services are so concerned about it justifies how very different the present West African international drug trade has become. There is a very high chance that if the current trend in drug infiltration continues, most countries, especially Guinea-Bissau, in the region will be plunged into chaos and political instability because they do not have strong institutions to deal with the infestation. In other words, the infiltration of the region by Europe-bound illicit drugs from Latin America, coupled with the weak institutions in most of the region's sixteen countries, will result in sustained political disorder. Therefore, a well-researched thesis on this contemporary phenomenon is warranted.
